Academics?! What, they’re gonna study your study?

Saw on my stats a number of searches for Zou Rong and “Essay on Zou Rong.” Makes me think that somebody, somewhere had a paper due. Unfortunately, the post they kept hitting was my Wire guide to the 1911 Revolution which had this to say about Zou Rong:

Bunk: [to McNulty] That will teach you to give a fuck when it ain’t your turn to give a fuck.

To Zou Rong, the 18-year-old wunderkind whose pamphlet/manifesto The Revolutionary Army, published in 1903, captured the imagination of a generation tired of the Manchus and their cronies. As rambling, plagiarized, melodramatic, and disjointed as any college-age student essay might be, his book neveertheless was a major influence on the nascent revolutionary movement at the time. Zou Rong argued that the Manchus were the real problem, having held the Han back for centuries, and that officials like Zeng Guofan and Li Hongzhang should be considered traitors for their suppression of rebellions (like the Taiping) that had sought to rid China of the Manchu scourge. He also quoted a lot of George Washington. Young revolutionaries weren’t the only ones to pay attention to Zou’s righteous anti-Manchu rage, the Manchu court also took notice. At the time, Zou was taking refuge (again, irony alert) in the British concession in Shanghai. Responding to a request from the Court, he was arrested by British authorities and although never handed over to the Qing government for execution, he eventually died at the tender age of 20 during his imprisonment by the British.

I’m hoping my visitor did some judicious editing before adding this nugget to his or her paper…